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Alternate Dying Rules

I just wrote up these alternate dying rules for Blood & Treasure. The normal rule is the old fashioned dead at 0 hit points.

ALTERNATE DYING RULESSome referees (and many players) think death at zero hit points is too harsh and prefer a system that makes dying less common. With those folks in mind, we present this alternate death system. Using this system for most monsters can be a bit of a headache with most monsters, though it might be used for important or unique monsters.

At zero hit points, a character fall unconscious for 1d4 hours. While they are unconscious, they are completely helpless and can be slain by a foe that has the time to slit their throat, stab them in the heart or strangle them with their bare hands. Any amount of healing, either from overnight rest or magic brings them to a conscious state.

If a character is driven into negative hit points, they must pass a fortitude saving throw modified by their current negative hit point total or die.

If such a character does not die, they are considered unconscious and severely wounded. They remain unconscious until their hit point total is brought back to 1 or higher. While severely wounded, a character heals only one hit point of damage per day of rest. Moreover, they must roll on the following table to determine the extent of their severe wounds.

SEVERE WOUNDS TABLE1-4. Facial scars. Character loses 1 point of charisma permanently.5. Blindness. This can be cured with remove blindness.6. Deafness. This can be cured with remove deafness.7. Mangled limbs. Roll 1d4 to determine the exact limb (1 Left Arm/Hand, 2 Right Arm/Hand, 3 Left Leg/foot, 4 Right leg/foot). Folk with arm or hand damage lose 1 point of strength permanently and suffer from all the obvious effects of such an injury. Folk with leg or foot damage lose 1 point of dexterity permanently and move at half the normal rate.8. Chest trauma. This might be a punctured lung, broken ribs or other organ damage. The victim loses 1 point of constitution permanently.9. Severed limb. Roll 1d4 to determine the exact limb (1 Left Arm/Hand, 2 Right Arm/Hand, 3 Left Leg, 4 Right leg). Folk who lose an arm or hand lose 1d3 points of strength permanently and suffer from all the obvious effects of losing such a limb. Folk who lose a leg lose 1d3 points of dexterity permanently and move at half the normal rate. The regenerate spell can restore lost limbs.10. Head injury. Victim loses 1d3 mental ability score points. For each lost point, roll 1d6 randomly to determine which ability score is affected: 1-2 Intelligence, 3-4 Wisdom, 5-6 Charisma.

Cure serious wounds, cure critical wounds and heal remove the effects of these serious wounds (except for severed limbs) as well as healing hit point damage. Lesser cure spells return lost hit points, but do not remove the effects of these wounds. Some other spells (as noted above) can alleviate these wounds, specifically any spell that heals ability score damage.